Dirty Triptych
by Senri
Summary: Kakuzu/Yugito/Hidan. A long gallows walk, a prodigal son, a woman in a dark corner. Persimmons, peaches, tangerines. Gods move in strange ways. Thank you my lovely reviewers for reminding me to update before 3 years passed again!
1. Dead Men Walking

Warnings: Male/male sex, male/female sex, language.

Characters: Kakuzu, Hidan, Yugito. (Kakuzu/Yugito/Hidan)

* * *

The thing about fucking Hidan is watching his composure fracture. The difference between the man who shouts and kills every day and the man who twists, pale face crumbling, reactions rising to the surface. Like stepping on ice and watching it break without wholly shattering, so that the shards can be pushed down and water rises darkly above them. The original structure is still discernable with a little imagination, and conceivably with time and patience could be recaptured; watching Hidan break is like that. It never happens all the way. He puts himself back together again each time, rises, regains his vinegary, painful personality.

There are many words for Hidan. Appropriate, as he has many words for everything.

Kakuzu is a simpler beast, although not, perhaps, to the naked eye. His history can be streamlined into a few defining events, many things that he's seen pass by, or calmly let go. Very little about the world actively concerns him nowadays, although he still enjoys money, enjoys having money, spending it. It separates weak men from strong ones, often, though not always. Power comes with it hand-in-hand. Better to have power than to lack it. Better to have cash than to lack it. Since he isn't precisely a man, he finds other ways to command the respect a human would. Terror and money. Both are reliable.

Common sense. Pragmatism. Qualities that he has, his partner lacks.

After breaking, Hidan storms. He loathes showing weakness. He storms out to find things and kill them. It is not a sad truth or a happy truth that watching him, hearing him, Kakuzu feels nothing. But it is a truth.

Kakuzu rests after sex. These days, he doesn't often sleep, and it doesn't bother him much to forego the illusions of humanity. He doesn't often sleep, and less often dreams.

So he's surprised to open his eyes to the water-stained ceiling with words in his mind. _The breakwaters are falling_. A sentence, floating like a bubble, no other connections. No emotion attached, either. He could have been satisfied, when he thought those words. Or furious. Something that either happened long ago or never did. If, by now, there's a difference.

* * *

Kakuzu's fucked a lot of people, for a lot of different reasons. Some of them theirs, some of them his. People have fucked him to try to manipulate him (not, generally, very successful. Not once he had the general idea of the idea behind the practice, at least. So in terms of all the years he's been alive, he's seen through the ruse more than he's been taken in by it. Statistical success). He's fucked people to try and manipulate them (very successful. He chooses his timing carefully, and he's had a long time to learn). He's fucked people to destroy them. He's fucked people to rebuild them. He's fucked people because he hates them. He's fucked people because he likes them. He's fucked people because they're interesting. People have fucked him because they like him, or they covet him, at least.

Someone, always, everywhere, will fuck him because they lust for power over his power. Or because they desire to bind. Or because they desire to push away. Because they desire to remember something sweet. Because they desire to forget. Because they desire comfort. Because they desire pain. Because they can.

At his age, everything reminds him of something else.

One memory leads to another. More complex than that: one memory binds to five or ten or twelve others, woven together, like chain mail. The land that slowly changes, the hot wind always blowing, soaked with scent, heat, memory. So many years. So much of being alone.

* * *

"-I mean, who do they think they're fucking kidding?"

Kakuzu blinks, squeezes the fruit in his hand, testing it for softness, deems it too hard and moves on. He is not engaged with Hidan's blather. Rather, he is on the lookout for the perfect persimmons, the ideal blend of hardy and ripe that means they'll be ready for eating on the road without being bruised to a pulp by the trials of harvest and transmit. He wants the best fruit he can find, the best value for his money. That's what he is thinking of, and also the tough leathery skin, the sweet trickle of juice on his dust-parched throat. How red the fruits are, red as luck. Hidan shifts beside him, makes a discontented noise, and then continues.

"Seriously. I mean, everyone ignoring all that? That's like ignoring god."

Maybe tangerines would be better… Kakuzu sighs, softly, and finally bothers to look at his partner. The priest glares back. His eyes are as red as the persimmons. Redder. Kakuzu looks away from him, down the sloping narrow street, crowded with moving people. The sea glimmers, incomparably turquoise, visible above the vermillion tiled roofs and cobbled streets. The sky is blue as happiness. The sun is hot and fat, tuning the town to a fine simmer.

"What?" he says, finally. Hidan twitches, shifts again. His face is full of irritable tics.

"All these fucking idiots. Walking around ignoring all that." He jabs his hand towards the horizon, looking resolutely away from the ocean, into Kakuzu's face. "How many fucking people you think get killed in that every year? And these shitheads aren't even paying attention. They line up like fucking sheep to get killed and none of them get it."

"Does it make you glad?" He steps down the street, glances over fat peaches as big as his hand, in a fist. The vendor stares past both of them. He has resolutely ignored them except for an acknowledging eye-flicker in Kakuzu's direction when they both approached.

"Sheep dying? Fuck no." Hidan sneers at Kakuzu's inquiring glance. "It's all unconsecrated. Worthless."

"Of course." Maybe, then, he would prefer persimmons to peaches, on this hot day. Or a mix of both. If he bought a soft peach now, he could buy a harder persimmon too, eat the peach and wait for the other to ripen. That means he must find a suitable peach. Difficult, as they are the more tender fruits, of the two. He could buy a soft persimmon and a hard peach. But even an unripe peach bruises more easily. It seems that tangerines and persimmons are the best bet, after all.

"_Listen_, asshole," Hidan says, following him down the piles of fruit, until Kakuzu stops at the tangerines. They are small and bright, fitting neatly into his hands like eggs. They look very good, round and juice-full. Kakuzu picks from the top of the pile, choosing carefully. "All that. Fucking out there. That's power. And these fuckheads don't even know it. They're too stupid. If they could just _see_… If I could just fucking _show_ them…"

"The ocean is its own god." After a moment of thought Kakuzu takes three tangerines. They are so good. They feel right in his hands. He is already imagining peeling them, a precious task, like pulling the skin back and breaking the ribs to unearth a human heart. "It doesn't need your help."

Since his attention to his partner has slackened he bumps into Hidan as he steps back towards the persimmons. The priest glares up at him ferociously.

"That's not a fucking _god_. It's just a _thing_."

The man's fury holds his partner at bay, for a moment. Hidan is full of that. Boiling points, spit and snarl and bile. Kakuzu idles, feels a burn of something that could be anger but ebbs before it reaches the high point. Instead he stares at Hidan amusedly. "You know nothing of the ocean."

Hidan's face twists. "Fuck that," he snarls, and Kakuzu stops listening, because he does understand. All that quiescent water out there could storm up in an instant, wipe this little village off the rocks and out of history. It doesn't need human acknowledgment to have its power and in that way it's stronger than Hidan's god. It is beyond human life, it doesn't care; it gives and takes according to whimsy. If it took the town it would take husbands, mothers and children with it. It feeds on human life. It finds its own sacrifice. A crop of fishermen, every year, foolish swimmers, pleasure boats that run afoul of the waters. And yet it also has so much to give. Omnipotent, bestowing gifts and taking sacrifice at will, with many more worshippers than his partner's old, foul god. Of course Hidan would be enraged by it.

Kakuzu is the son of those dark waters, and if he thinks about the ocean, he thinks of origin but never home. The waters lapping at the land like a man giving love to a woman with his tongue. The starving depths. Growing up, but never being a child. Worshipping, hollowly, without devotion. A prodigal son, easily led astray.

Here he is, after all. Astride the land.

* * *

Because Hidan doesn't introspect – he barely _thinks_ – he's hard to teach. And Kakuzu, automatically, is a teacher. Among many other things. Leader, lover – well, fuckbuddy - teacher, enemy. Personal and close.


	2. Dead Men Hunting

The thing about Hidan fucking him is when he does it, he thinks he's won. He clings tight, leaves crescent-marks dug into Kakuzu's skin with his fingernails and teeth, laughs and snarls and babbles into his partner's face. Always with the talking. Even when Kakuzu's the one catching, his partner is the one who falls apart. Which is kind of beautiful in its own sordid way. Kakuzu likes the slow collapse, the disintegration of what was there before, so he feels a certain communalism with Deidara, although he'd never say it and certainly in medias res Deidara, of all people, is never on his mind. Just Hidan, Hidan Hidan, in all his broken-glass jagged glory. His hair, colored the pale edge of a candle-flame. His large, strong hands. The hooded eyes red as persimmons, fresh-spilt blood, luck. The jet beads of the rosary.

So many people have died on the both of them. Not that it hurts, so much as it's just a surprise, even after all these times. Like touching one's forehead, rubbing dully at the sweaty dust-streaked skin and accidentally sticking a finger through a hole to poke at the ruined remnants of a brain. Which Kakuzu has seen shinobi do, now and again. Lose half their heads and live for a day or an hour or ten minutes more. And all things beyond that. That's what he thinks about, being fucked by Hidan. Carnage and destruction, everything he's seen. How different they are.

So many years. They're like starvation, they carve a person down to the bare essentials. Years on his mind, like wind shaping the rocks, into lurid shapes, unreal, dreamlike, and wholly strange. Things that are old become very fine, or they become trash. Kakuzu isn't sure of his partner's fate as of yet.

The sun bleaches Hidan to ivory, something fine and yellowed, long held in the world.

00000

The thing about fucking with Kakuzu is the man is strong.

Well, no shit; if he wasn't strong he wouldn't have survived to become an S-ranked criminal in the most highly dangerous conglomeration of missing-nin in the world, but even so. He's strong enough for it to stand out, in a cabal of the strongest.

Hidan wasn't that impressed, at first. He's got a lot of strength himself. But Kakuzu, he's got fucking finesse, and a surgeon's eye to go with it. A good enough eye to reattach severed arms, sinking fine stitches even into the nerves, enough to restore fine motor control and give back the use of a very uncommon bloodline limit. And that's only one of the really impressive things Hidan has seen his partner do, during the period of their acquaintance.

So Kakuzu knows the human body. Knows how to help it, how to hurt it. The first time Hidan saw the man lose most of his human shell, reduce himself to a flurry of black cord and searing eyes, he thought fuck. And then Kakuzu flung himself like a jungle cat, pulverizing enemies with sledgehammer blows, and Hidan looked at the corpses afterwards and bones had shattered under the force his partner unleashed. Bones had shattered, and some of the people had stretched or gone strangely shaped because none of what usually held them up was holding them up anymore, and when Hidan lifted a limb the broken shards pushed white and round and ghostly, pale shapes through the flesh. But finesse, still. His partner had torn apart his enemies without ever breaking the skin.

So, yes, Hidan wanted that. Some of that controlled power. Some of that monstrously directed force. The rapid swing of Kakuzu's limbs, delivering casual death blows, the yelps of shinobi as he clubbed them down like uppity puppies. A creature capable, like Hidan's god, of healing. But preferring to visit destruction. Yes, yes, yes he thought, and he wants a taste of that unbridled rage, to be swaddled in the typhoon, to feel the grind of bone on bone in his own body. Carnage pushing against his skin, and still not a drop of blood spilled. The skin still unbroken.

00000

They come upon her in a grim, once-hallowed place, and she seems a woman well-acquainted with the night. Her gaze is black, keen, unerring as a hawks, and Kakuzu has never seen a mortal creature so steeped in death. Soaked in it. The Nekomata scorches the air around her with the smell of burned flesh and blue fire.

The Nekomata's been around since everything began, and it's made her strange, too; in a way as odd as them. He can see it. He's has long practice at seeing things, at clear vision.

And it's made her tremendously tired. A human envelope shouldn't be forced to carry around that much raw energy.

She looks, as she delivers her battle cry, as though she is hoping that events will not unfold as she expects, and she looks as though her expectations are not great. Hidan says he wants to destroy everything and she looks at Kakuzu like she's expecting he'll yank down the mask and declare it all an elaborate joke. Kakuzu says she's the last one and she looks at Hidan like she's hoping he'll tap the scythe on the ground, laugh, shoot his mouth off. Just kidding, princess. Testing your reflexes. You pass.

But she doesn't pass. She falls, eventually, as she knew and he knew and they knew and she knew they knew she would, from the moment they laid eyes on each other.

00000

He wants to leave bloody tracks up and down her body. Hidan was here – a little message to whatever gods find her. In a perfect world he'd be sending her direct to his own, of course, but the world is so very fucking imperfect that he'll do the best he can and leave the rest to luck, chance, and predestination.

While it lasts, he loves fucking this bitch. He loves fucking this bitch up. He loves watching her unravel a little each time – but, no. Unravel is a soft word for a soft thing and Yugito is a hard woman. Like an icicle. So what he's doing is melting her, a little bit each time, and when she freezes again she's reformed. Something different, but still essentially the same: a dagger of frozen water, a cone like a special kind of knife, something formed in the cold and the clear, something sharp enough to pierce.

She keeps that core, cloaks it in pride and fatalism, and never looks at him. He hits her harder each time and that small aristocratic face flushes, the little mouth curdles with dislike, but she keeps coming back up. It's fun. He tries pushing her harder and she bounces back, scathed, the ice clouded, not the same. Marks made. Wear and tear. But even so, it's not like she ever breaks.

Hidan knows it's not gonna last. It can't possibly last. There's a limit, supposedly, to everything (not to his life, but that's another matter entirely – something special). A limit to how long he can twist an arm before it pops out of its socket. A limit to how much blood a sacrifice can lose before they collapse. A limit to how much she can take before she blows.

But at this rate, it looks like she's gonna die before the inevitable meltdown hits. And it surprises him, but the mystery is fun. So Hidan's okay with that.

00000

Yugito is most beautiful when she is looking away. Her profile is so sharp. The dark, severe mouth, the dark slanted eyes, the golden skin, the honey-colored hair that she keeps tied and confined. Straight on her face becomes masklike, frozen with regret and a slowly creeping torturous kind of fear. Straight on, she looks into her future, and all she sees is death. In profile she gazes upon a plethora of possibilities. All kinds of things that might-have-been.

Asked (as he has been asked), is it a quick death, Kakuzu would say (has said) quicker than some. For her, in the prime of her life, young and strong, it will be slow. It could be a mixed blessing, although he doubts that it is, from where she stands. Still, every moment where she still exists must count, however it's spent. He sees no reason to force her deeper in a mire of unhappiness. She does that well enough for herself. And although her death is an accomplished fact, he sees no reason that she should dwell on it so. Though that could be accounted for by his increasing distance to humanity, a gulf wider as each year goes by.

So while she is under him, he lets her look away. At the bluebells, nodding in the breeze; the beetle climbing up the bobbing stalk. He moves, and she reacts in almost complete silence. He smoothes his fingers over her torturously furrowed brow. She is so full of pride and rage, and he shades her eyes as though to protect her from temporary blindness, the kind that might comes on the snowfield, gazing unprotected onto a blazing expanse of white. And from looking at him, of course. He has no means to be kind but there is no reason to indulge in cruelty. Not with death roaring like a steam engine, rumbling down upon her, head-on.

He remembers a long time ago being caught by a hurricane. Picked up by it, spun and flung, easily as breaking a kite in a furious gale. The crazed winds picked up trees, too, splintered them into deadly weapons. When the storm dropped him he was unconscious and he woke up with a four-foot splinter of wood driven through his body. It had pulverized one of his hearts and a good fifth of his threads melted to slag when he dissolved the integrity of his form and slid free from the splinter, where it became a stake, pinning him to the ground.

It was a painful, terrifying event, the only thing he remembers for a long period, the closest to death he'd come in a long time. To be so powerless, flung about like a puppet by a breeze throwing a tantrum. He supposes that the memory holds some resemblance, perhaps, to what Yugito is now experiencing. A storm of events slipping out of her grasp, flinging her, will she or nil she. He has become the hurricane.

He was hungry, when he woke up, with that one heart destroyed. Absolutely empty. Needing food more than anything, at that one second. Starving.

00000

Hidan seems slightly enamored of their temporary traveling companion, if such a flighty word can be applied to his emotion, spiced with greed and smugness, hate and nihilism. Enamored is a sweet word for what's actually a scalding thing, thick as curry, redolent with smugness and pleasure derived from teasing and torment, but Kakuzu has entertained himself at times with observing his partner's stranger proclivities and asked to summarize the interaction in a word, that's how he'd characterize it. Enamored.

Kakuzu knows as an absolute fact that Hidan is not indifferent to anything, however he plays sometimes at pretending not to care. Rather, Hidan hates everything. He is offended by everything. But he is a creature of many facets, many contradictions. He possesses a shattered mind. It allows him to like and hate things at the same time. He can hate and be amused by things at the same time. And Yugito, she prompts both reactions in him.

This is why her forced comradeship with them on their little trek to her death, however shortly it may ultimately last, concerns Kakuzu. Hidan latches on to the most unsuitable things at times. Kakuzu himself is a case in point.

But perhaps he worries himself for nothing. His partner seems satisfied with his lot, and mostly indifferent that the girl must die; while she's within Hidan's reach the man will twist and wrangle her between his hands, and when called to, he'll do as commanded, and let her fall.

00000

What he wants her to learn, before the end: losing is acceptable, as is victory. But choosing not to play is admitting loss from the start, which is unacceptable.

Win or lose, the only penalty comes with sitting out. The thing is to play.

00000

The thing about Yugito is she knows she's gonna die and they know she knows and she knows they know she knows and so on and so on and so on, ad nauseum. But Hidan thinks that if somebody pushed her she would admit that she is actually not minding the whole thing so very much, or at least is not caring much either way, because she's a Cloud kunoichi and a pretty decent fucking soldier as far as these things go and those types are always kind of fatalistic. Expecting a death blow around every corner and, well, here they are. The ironic thing about the whole thing is that it's the fucking idealists, the fucking non-fatalists, the ninja who really want to fucking be something who go rogue and bail out, and then usually they get iced by their own villages, by their former teammates and teachers sometimes, and the whole fucking thing just compounds in hilarity. Fucking ha ha ha.

But, digression.

The thing about Yugito is she is going to die, no ands ifs or buts. The thing about Yugito is that she wants nothing. She wants to be left alone. She wants it to be fast. Hidan is going to stand on the King of Hell and chant his little chant and play his little part and watch her slip away, far ahead from him, into lands he wishes he could chart. The fucking unappreciative bitch. So he is going to have his fun and get as much juice out of her as he can squeeze in the limited time there is. And she will cooperate because she doesn't care.

The thing, the great thing, the defining thing about Yugito is that she wants nothing. So it works out really well, actually, in the end. Hidan has nothing to give.

00000

On the way, they stop in a town for a short while. The dingiest part of it, the seediest of the poor quarters, and Kakuzu orders them curtly to wait and disappears into a nondescript little warning. Hidan ventures after a woman selling dango and for the first time in days Yugito is left alone with her thoughts. It's a little bit shocking. If she were them, she wouldn't have let them out of her sight. But maybe it's all right because where would she go? The seal on her stomach is enormous, elaborate, and it spreads over her skin like a spider web. The cat's chakra for the most part is beyond her reach, and right now, she's what she sometimes wished to be: a normal woman. At the worst possible time, of course. But still.

She doesn't try to escape. She doesn't even really think about it, beyond the first move her mind makes in that direction. She just sits down on the curb and puts her chin in her hands, exhausted, wallowing in her own blankness. The seal itches on her skin. She thinks about being thirsty, and how she's not going to get away. It's really the end of the line. She closes her eyes and opens them, wanting to sleep.

She has her eyes closed when Hidan scuffles up to her again, holding three sticks of dango in a fist. He shoves her over on the curb just because he can and hunches beside her, sliding one soft, sweet round of dough off the end of a stick and pulping it between his teeth. His arm is a bar of heat against her. He smells like blood and sweat and the oil that waterproofs his cloak. Yugito does her best to ignore his obtrusive self, even when he transfers one of the sticks to his free hand and waves it in her face.

"Want it?" he says, poking her cheek with the end of the skewer, and Yugito jerks back, turns her head away. Hidan is sometimes just obnoxious as well as indulgently cruel. This is one of his most horrible characteristics.

"No."

"What? Why the hell not?"

He sounds put out with her, as if he's gone to a great deal of trouble to procure her a gift which she now proves ungrateful for. Yugito sighs, feeling stirred up, annoyed. "I hate dango," she says sullenly, unwilling to divest the slightest personal detail, no matter how inconsequential it might be.

Hidan looks at her incredulously. "What kind of crazy bitch hates dango?"

Yugito glares at him, and then glances away. He laughs. Finishes the sweets on his own. "Everyone in this shitty organization loves dango," he says. "It's practically all the fucking Uchiha eats."

It's peculiar that he's telling her this, as she's not even pretending to care. Yugito flexes her fingers against her skin. Wishes Kakuzu would hurry up and come out, and draw his partner's attention away from her.

"Hey. What's with you making that fucking face? I'm just trying to be nice."

She humps her shoulders and doesn't turn around. Hidan chuckles, a sound like the warning buzz of a rattlesnake, and grabs the back of her head. The base of her braid. He makes her turn and look at him and Yugito doesn't even really fight it, just glowers the whole time. His eyes are hooded, amused. "Yeah. Seriously, I'm such a nice fucking guy. You just can't see it."

Yugito jerks back against his grip and opens her mouth to say something cutting, which is when he kisses her, with a hot slide of tongue and light graze of teeth. He tastes a little like blood, but that's probably psychosomatic, and a lot more like dango, which probably isn't. The sweet isn't more to her liking, when it's just an aftertaste on his tongue, and neither is the kiss. Scalding and slow and sweet-flavored, and it all kind of winds up into one package, one sullenly-glowing ingot of hate when he pulls back for a breath. She knows she's never going to get that taste out of her mouth, now.

00000

The thing about Yugito is that she is so small. Lithe, and heavy with muscle, but small and woundable-seeming in a way Hidan isn't. In low light, thought, she looks carved of soapstone, in Hidan's way. Her hair pale, unbound and cobweb-fine. Small enough to cradle close, and Kakuzu enjoys the contrast of her skin to his, her nature to Hidan's. Her reserve against Hidan's dogged near-gentle persistence. Her hand braced against his shoulder, not hard – stop. Compare to Hidan's pull and complaint, his vortex of desire.

He stops, because she asks, and observes her bowed head, her eyes tracking, fixed on nothing. Almost, almost, almost he is the gentle one in this dynamic, and certainly he has the most patience. Enough, at least, to indulge one young girl.

"No," she says, when he slides his hand around to stroke the nape of her neck. So he stills, to enjoy studying her, the dark lips as though her mouth is berry-stained, the dark lining around her eyes, the dark nipples and dusky areola, standing out like ink stains against her pale skin.

Eventually, her aimless gaze wanders back to him. Knowing how he must appear doesn't phase him, and it doesn't seem to discombobulate her. When he moves his fingers again against her skin she says nothing, only lowers her head a little more, so her hair trails around her face.

"Tell me…" He shifts her closer, strokes the curve of her spine. Moves his fingers along the stitches he put in, to keep her alive, to be sacrificed later. As on Hidan, the contrast between her skin and his cord interests him. "Does the cat speak to you?"

Her head moves slightly. Not obviously, but he can feel her drawing away, the shifting muscle under her skin. He uses her silence to let cords steal out over her skin, small feelers sensitive to small changes.

"Sometimes," she says, expressionless. "In dreams."

By the tempo of her heart rate, he judges that's partly truth, at least.

"And recently?"

Instead of answering, she swaps him a question. "Does it hurt much?"

Kakuzu pauses, and then with his free hand he gives her hair a quick, hard ruffle. "Mostly, jinchuuriki aren't around to give feedback afterwards."

She frowns, he can hear it in her voice – "I answered your question."

"If you want answers, ask questions that have them."

She looks up at him, and there's a spark in her eye, the way fury might look from far, far away.

Silently, he pulls and adjusts her until her forehead rests against his chest. Breath ghosts warmly over his skin. With one hand against her neck and one against the small of her back, he says, "It seems terribly painful. But I doubt you'll be coherent long enough to worry much about it."

Besides, he guesses that she's the kind of person who can stand some pain. Yugito actually barks a hoarse little laugh.

Indulging himself, he sits and rocks her for a few minutes afterward, her silent, her heart rate down after the initial flare. Eventually she turns her head and glances up at him. "Don't," she says, toneless, hapless. "I'm not a child."

Wrong.

But, "No," he says, instead, guiding her a little closer.

This is currently how it exists for them. Favors for favors, half-truths freely given.

00000

She is going to die and that's the best thing about her. He can say anything, and it doesn't matter.


	3. Dead Men Coming Home

Yugito acquires marks all along her skin. Dark circles below her eyes, and a pattern of bruises along her arms, all down her back. Courtesy of Hidan, those; little pinched bruises, impressed upon her skin with his fingernails, some of them healing yellow-green and some of them still fresh, colored purple and maroon from blood pooling under the skin. From a distance, the marks look like florets. Stylized roses. A garden imprinted upon her flesh, slowly withering as she heals.

Kakuzu is sure Hidan's aware of the affect, and probably derives a great deal of amusement from it. As for himself, he thinks about the real garden she might someday host - the decayed remains of her, at least. Maybe real roses, feeding off the liquid remains of her innards, her shattered bones. That she will host a garden is a possibility, but a remote one. More likely Zetsu will devour what he can, and discard the rest in some corner of the wilderness where her remains will disintegrate in slow peace.

He enjoys watching her. Yugito is beautiful, almost preternaturally still, a layer removed from the ordinary. Like them. She watches Kakuzu back, with flat, dark eyes. Animal eyes, eyes belonging to a creature altogether different, something lean and damp-furred, that moves with quiet feet. Like nascent desire.

Surprisingly, she isn't terrified of him. Perhaps there's just too many things coming upon her for her to be paralyzed with fear, and not terrified does not mean not nervous, but still. She's something more interesting. Occasionally, she even summons up enough interest to be bold; surprising, and pleasing too. Although boldness or cowardice will soon make no difference. In the meantime he trammels the depths of her, scratching away at the dark soil to unearth filthy, grit-blackened pieces of essence. The pale and still-emerging pieces of her, cotyledons burdened with dirt and dross. Kakuzu fancies it all a learning experience. Most shinobi die without ever really knowing anything about themselves, so if she must die, at least she goes like this: with answers, here and there.

He metes out shards and fragments of himself, too, to her. Hints of answers. Shows her the threads, a deluge pouring out of his body. Like water, they can be both gentle and not. A soft, much-compressed, strong wreath. Between her fingers the strands thicken, draw up fat as night crawlers, and more stir and wrap her to the wrist. Further tendrils crawl up her forearm. Yugito watches their progress with her lips drawn tightly together, and when the first feelers touch the crook of her elbow she pulls away.

Kakuzu watches idly. He can feel her heart rate ticking under her skin, crawling higher as she pulls and he doesn't let go. The inside of her arm is pale. The veins, where they rise close to the skin, are skim-milk blue. She looks at him reproachfully, and he finally eases off the pressure exerted by the cords and allows her to slide her arm free. She's fine, of course; he held her firmly but with even pressure. Yugito moves her fingers as if surprised she still has them, glancing down at her hand, turning away. He has to sigh. It's that or laugh, at her reserved self, the stiff-legged, stalking pride she clings to.

As far as these things go, hers won't be such a bad fate. She could have far worse ones. A long walk to the noose, but then it's quick. And in the meantime, she almost hosts a garden.

00000

She wakes up and wakes up and wakes up. Her brain is being bundled up in cotton. She can't think very well. She's not sure if it's dreaming or waking, or madness or not, or possibly on purpose (the word might be denial) and the closer she gets to the end of the line the more she just wants to roll over and ignore it, go to sleep and never wake up. It would be so much easier that way.

But until then.

She wakes up surreally, with Kakuzu oh-so-gently carding her hair.

She wakes up nose-to-nose with Hidan, a skull mask painted over his face.

She wakes up and Hidan roars, "First to fall fails! GO!" and she is throwing hard punches into his face, as hard as she can, Kakuzu's additions to her seal pricking as she pulls as much chakra as she can. Hidan is not punching as hard as he can and she is just fast enough even with the cat mostly suppressed to dodge his hits and land her own. It's still not fair. It's never been fair. She plays anyway because sitting out equals losing. She snaps punches into his face and feels his nose splinter under her knuckles. Loves that feeling, just for a second. Really loves it. He claps a hand to his face, spins, reels, comes back at her with the bone fragments already knitting together, sputtering blood, his grin wide, wild. His roundhouse punch ignites novas in her head. She keeps her footing barely barely barely. The rocks rattle, like applause. It's so hard, so hard, to stay upright. She catches him one-two under the chin and slips, doesn't fall.

Kakuzu sits on a rock to consult his map. He doesn't even glance up at them as they go spinning by.

She wakes up and the cat's whiskers tickle her face, claws prickle and knead against her stomach and breasts. Yugito lies still. She breathes and doesn't move an inch. The cat's fur on her skin is as soft as water. The pads are hot as brands. She cracks her eyes open and the Nekomata's pupils draw to slits. The eyeteeth protrude just barely from beneath its upper lip, the black mouth that seems to curve in a sarcastically amused smile.

"You're meant to be trapped," Yugito whispers. She'd thought it the one fringe – very fringe – benefit of the whole farcical death march: that Kakuzu's shoring up her seal would bijuu-proof her mind for what time she had remaining.

The Nekomata purrs like a steam engine. "Oh, the cat came back, the very next day… trapped, yes. Confined? No."

Lie. Yugito says nothing. It is at least kept from her waking mind, now.

The paws work against her skin. The Nekomata has six toes. Somewhere, they think that's good luck; Yugito thinks it's a sign of something, at least.

"I told you something was coming for you. Something big." The cat sounds murderously pleased. It pauses to swipe her with its rough tongue, the surprise of that leaves her blinking and shifting when it's gone.

"You shouldn't be pleased," Yugito wants to point out. "They don't mean to do you any favors." But the cat, she knows, is spiteful. Perhaps it identifies with them. Felines are well known, after all, for toying with their prey.

She wakes up and she is swathed in a greasy, dark wing, slung on someone's back, moving and blinking and breathing. The wing unwraps, reveals itself a cloak instead, and Kakuzu gazes down at her calmly. "Awake?"

She has no sure answer for him.

00000

They stand in the circle and chant, and she dies.

"Fun while it lasted," says Hidan.

00000

On their way out of Rain Country they stop for lunch on the roadside, near a small shrine. Hidan swings his scythe over his back and hunkers under the overhang to gnaw at the field rations and shelter from the rain. It doesn't really help because everywhere is wet, in Rain. He feels like he's fucking drowning in his own sweat, in the cloak; the hem drags into a puddle, collects mud that obscures the uncompromising black wool and red clouds.

Tucked back in the alcove is a small, worn figure, and he's aware of it even while he ignores it. Fucking little heathen gods, fucking little heathens. His god is a roar like a forest fire. A rush of gale winds. An encompassing thing. Not something small, stunted, that must skulk on back roads waiting for travelers to come and think of their neglected souls.

Kakuzu doesn't bother with shelter. The rain doesn't bother him, even though it soaks his hood and runs in chilly rivulets down the back of his neck. He ignores it, calmly pulling down his mask, unwrapping his own rations. He puts his back to the godling's house too. Fucking heathen, he is. Fucking atheist. Hidan tries and tries and what does he fucking get.

The ration is dry and hard to chew. He has to take mouthfuls of water along with his bites, although that doesn't make the meal any more pleasant. Finally Hidan snorts with irritation and gives it up. The whole fucking place is pissing him off.

Kakuzu doesn't turn around when Hidan stands up and stretches. Annoyed with that and everything, Hidan turns around and scuffles back into the shrine. It's dim and moist in there. He thinks about trying to smash the little figure, breaking the altar in two. There's not much on there anyway. A cheap hairpin, a few withered petals. This is a mostly forgotten shrine.

Hidan gazes down at the altar for a few minutes, wavering between smashing it, turning away, and… something else. Finally he lowers his head and smirks. Gods are gods, after all. Enemies sometimes may greet one another.

The strand of beads nearly escapes him when he digs into his pocket. The thread is broken and only part of the loop remains strung, now. He finds one of the red coral beads, slippery and cool between his fingers, and drops it onto the plinth. It clicks on the stone and rolls as though it might fall clean off the edge, but on the way some indiscernible dip in the altar catches and holds it.

He snickers to himself and slips his hand back into his pocket. There are lots of beads left, still, even though he'd lost plenty of them breaking the cord getting the necklace in the first place. It was okay. There were lots of them still.

His partner's footsteps are nearly silent against the stone, put the patter of raindrops sheeting off his cloak is loud. Hidan partly turns to watch Kakuzu and the altar both, observe the way the man casually shakes water off of his cloak before stepping deeper into the shadow. His eyes are bright, pearly points in dim shelter. It's impossible to tell whether he approves or not when he glances down at the altar.

"A sacrifice to another god?" the man finally asks.

"Che." Hidan shakes his head violently and sneers. "It's a fucking insult, seriously."

"Ah," Kakuzu says eventually, and maybe he gets it, that the godling should be crushed, that the only person who thinks to acknowledge him belongs already to another god.

In the silence, Hidan pulls the whole loop of beads from his cloak and swings it in front of his partner. After considering for a moment he slides two more off the string and places them to accompany the other.

"You don't think it will call bad luck?" Kakuzu's eyes flicker at him quizzically.

"Hah! How the fuck should it do that?"

"She might follow." His partner inclines his head towards the altar.

"Bitch is dead," Hidan sneers. "'s not like we're in a fucking fairy tale."

00000

They walk and walk like always, across the whole broad country. Kakuzu still feels the ripples of preceding events in his mind; it reminds him of something, but he doesn't remember what. That's not a surprise. Everything reminds him of something, and so many things have passed. Why should he care to remember them all? If things aren't normal again yet, they will be soon enough. Everything is brief, when you have forever to get over it.

"Fire country," Pein orders them. "A target awaits you there." And for the moment, they turn their path in that direction. Kakuzu is thinking of returning to the shore, afterwards. After Akatsuki has fallen and he is free again. It's been a long time since he's gone into the water.

Everything is the same. Everything is different. Hidan leaves a cluster of beads at every shrine they pass, and sometimes in random places too. Tucked in the cup of an abandoned bird's nest. Jammed too tightly to be removed into a heating unit's vent. Dropped into the teapot, when they stop for a hot drink, at a shop along the road.

They keep a tight watch. Akatsuki members are always wanted men.

Hidan turns out his pocket by the campfire one night and beads cascade from the fabric, a clicking red torrent, pattering across the loamy ground. More than should have been in there. Kakuzu sits stiffly and watches Hidan swear, shake his hand and dig in his pocket and finally pull out the half-loop of beads, which long ago he depleted.

"Bad luck," he says. "I told you."

"Fucking bitch is dead!" Hidan roars. "Fucking bitch, you're DEAD!"

They pick up camp and stamp out the fire. And they walk all night.

00000

There's a dead woman following their shadows. Stepping softly in the ghosts of warmth left by their footprints. A patch of cold air. A breath in a still room. Red coral beads dropped like white pebbles, and duly followed.

Ghosts. Not something that Kakuzu has had so much experience with. He's seen others plagued by them, before. Uneasy spirits.

He doesn't see her, but he can imagine. Lithe and silent, Yugito watching them, her eyes dark and clear.

Hidan snatches his robe up in handfuls and shakes him back and forth. "Fucking bitch," he snarls, he grins. His eyes are almost aflame with fury. "She's dead. She can fucking watch this if she wants to."

He's all hard muscle and heat. Lightning licking across the teeth. Kakuzu meets and matches him. Hidan is an irritant, a grating wound. He stings, like citrus drizzled into a cut.

It's all right. Kakuzu's dealt with worse before. From others and from him.

He'll take this as it comes, and go on and on and on, living.

00000

The thing about death is, it comes so softly, even after such a long time. He thought it would be eager to take him. Snatch him up, pull him under, in one fast rush. But no, no. It comes as softly and as heavily as a cat. A cat walking up on him, to curl on his chest and share breaths. And a soft cushion of earth beneath him, and distant chirping. Crickets, like red, for luck. His heart is stuttering. Ticking like a thrush's wings against a window pane. His brain is dying. He's seen this, so many times, played out on other bodies.

The leaf-nin approaches and he opens his eyes, turns his head against the soft ground. Kakashi, copy-nin, leaf-nin, enemy, is blurred through the fog blowing up over Kakuzu's vision. The fog is ice-fog, perfectly white, freezing cold, gleaming and beautiful. He's been so many things over countless years. A wise man, now losing thought. A leader, now led.

Feet scuffle over the earth next to him. They are too small, and narrow, to belong to the copycat. Kakuzu glances up through his hair; it's come undone, free of the hood, and now falls in oily black strands across his vision. Through his fringe he can clearly see Yugito's pale face.

She crouches next to him and he feels the pressure of her cold hand on his shoulder. If she really tried, she'd be able to roll him onto his back; she doesn't try. He just shifts, slightly, with the pressure.

"Where the hell's Hidan?" he mutters. "How… it's…"

So many things, over such a long life. Stolen from others, bought honestly, earned on his own. An injustice, that he'd fall this way, coming to almost nothing at the end.

She doesn't speak to him. Just presses her hands hard against his side. It's mostly the earth holding his body together, now. Soaking up what passes for his blood.

"The crickets." It seemed desperately important to let her know. The chirping is deafening, almost a roar; he can't hear his voice over them. Can't know if he's speaking more comprehensibly than a mumble. But… vital, that he try. "Are you listening? Tonight, they're…"

Teacher. Gambler. Leader. Lover. Enemy. Ache. Twist in the spine. Thorn in the side. Young. Old. Falls-nin. Sea's son… host to a garden. Keeper of a thousand secrets. Hearer of so many dead.

He sees her catch her lower lip with her teeth. Her mouth moves, but the crickets overpower her. They are truly a roar now, truly, an unbroken pour of sound. Breaking over his head, running down his back, soothing and stinging at once. Water. The ocean?

When did I come here, Kakuzu thinks. It's been so long…

The waves break over his head. And, nothing.


End file.
